My current assignment in metalsmithing is to make a box. We have some restrictions and some flexibility. My box won’t be very functional as a box that holds things, although I think it may work out to hold candles — regardless, I’m primarily concerned with the asthetic over anything else. We are required to have a single piece wrap around to make the walls of the box. We also need to utilize at least three surface detailing techniques. My current plan is to sandblast a design around the sides — I haven’t decided what to do for the other two techniques.

Here you see the wall piece with the lid template put on top. I’m in the middle of cutting that lid piece but don’t have a picture right now. I’ll update the blog with more progress and cell-phone pictures.

Using Construct, I’ve made a few different small tech demos just to prototype different potential gameplay elements. This one was created to prototype homing missles that could explode in clusters through a chain reaction. It was expanded to prototype different options on the fly and some very basic distortion. Most of the graphics are photos of classmates that were posted on the class forum — a more entertaining option than simple game graphics and it got a few laughs during the presentation.

You can download it here.

hold space to fire missles
press z to set it to explosion particles
press x to set it to distortion
press c to enable max’s defense system

In my game class, a 3D chess set is the first thing you learn how to do. I was already familiar with maya, so I took the opportunity to experiment with bumpmapping and more advanced lighting. Back in high-school, I had worked with very basic bumpmapping, but this chess set features more substantial material imitations. There’s some texture projection issues, but considering how little time I spent on it, I’m pretty satisfied overall.

I’ll be moving Raket (the 2D sidescroller game) to Construct. It will likely take a while to port all the work done so far, but I think it will be very worth it. Construct is open source and free of charge.

Construct has quite a few advantages over my current engine as well. It’s hardware accelerated, so I’ll be able to have more going on on-screen. It also supports shaders, so I’ll have easy access to lots of nice visual effects. Construct can handle some primitive 3D objects that I can incorporate into my 2D game. I’m excited to start working with Construct for Raket and will keep the blog updated.